The Engine

When I looked into replacing the inboard diesel on my current boat, I found out that it would cost about a third of the price of the entire boat, and much labor, to pull the old one and install a new one. Considering that this engine would get used a few days a year for a few hours at most—to pull in and out of marinas, to shoot an inlet, and maybe to motor down a canal or two—this level of expense is completely ridiculous and impossible to justify.

Add to that the space that an inboard diesel takes up, with its endless hoses and other mechanical junk. Add to that the stink of diesel, the periodic oil in the bilge when the beast decides to start leaking, the decommissioning/recommissioning boondoggle after and before each season, and the clatter and throb of a high-compression engine, and the inboard diesel's remaining charms seem rather few and far between, at least to me. The high price of replacement parts, or of diesel mechanics, doesn't charm me either. Nor am I pleased with the necessity of contorting myself in a cramped space full of filthy, jagged objects in order to work on it (sailboat engines are installed in some of the most uncomfortable, badly designed engine compartments on earth).

When a diesel engine isn't being used, its fuel accumulates condensation and grows slime, which then plugs up the fuel filter. You see, certain bacteria find diesel fuel delicious, and all it takes to get them started is a few drops of water at the bottom of the tank. Diesels are generally reliable, except when there are fuel problems, but that is almost all the time, meaning that they are not reliable at all. There is almost no other use for diesel fuel than to burn it in a diesel engine. Diesel causes kerosene lamps to burn their wicks in a big hurry, and kerosene heaters do work on diesel but stink up the cabin.

At this point some people would probably want to point out that diesel engines have certain advantages. They last an incredibly long time—tens of thousands of hours. You are just supposed to change the oil every 100 hours or so... which I never do, because I have never, ever racked up 100 hours on any engine I've owned, even when moving the boat between Massachusetts and Florida. Instead, I changed the oil once a year, whether it needed it or not. What a waste! Diesel engines are also more fuel-efficient than gasoline engines. But I don't care about fuel efficiency. I only care about overall efficiency, and in terms of overall efficiency (money, space, etc.) diesel engines are, for me, grossly inefficient. Lastly, some people will say that diesel fuel is safe because it isn't particularly flammable, as opposed to gasoline. This is true, but there are plenty of gasoline-powered boats in the world, and they hardly ever explode, which is good enough for me.

But what alternatives are there? Well, it is possible to do an electric conversion. Electric conversions are quiet and much more efficient, because they can generate constant thrust instead of constant revolutions. But once you decide that you need to be able to motor any great distance, you find out that something has to power the electric motor, and that something invariably turns out to be a diesel generator, returning you to square one. Well, not quite: the price of an electric motor, motor controller, batteries, charger and associated wiring and hardware, plus the price of a diesel generator, is two or three times what it costs to just to replace the old diesel with a new one.

Another alternative is to use an outboard engine. Outboards mounted on transom brackets can be seen on many smaller sailboats, but they don't work very well at all because of cavitation, where waves cause the prop to come out of the water. When that happens, the prop spins in the air, the engine screams, and the boat rapidly loses speed; it's a most unpleasant experience. There is no way to properly adjust an outboard bracket on a sailboat; either it sits too high and the cavitation is simply relentless, or it sits too low and gets drowned by waves.

To work well with an outboard engine, a sailboat has to be designed with a special aperture some distance forward from the transom: an engine well. Since there isn't room to tip the engine up when not in use, it has to slide up and down on a track. And since you don't want to be reaching down into a well every time you need to shift or adjust the throttle, it requires control cables going to a console.

But if all these things are designed correctly, this arrangement works remarkably well. If you need to work on the engine, you pull it out of its well using a hoist, put it on a work-stand and work on it comfortably standing up—no need to clamber around an inboard engine, stuffing yourself into tight spaces, skinning your knuckles and bruising your kneecaps.

Unlike a sailboat's diesel, many of which are exotic, with hard-to-find parts (Volvos are especially notorious) if the outboard engine ever fails, it can be replaced for short money anywhere in the world very quickly and easily. If you find that you need more power, the upgrade is an easy one, because, unlike diesels, outboards don't increase all that much in size as they increase in power. A 75hp is not all that much bigger than a 10hp. HOGFISH motored at about 6kt on a 10hp Yamaha. QUIDNON will probably need at least a 35hp to go as fast.

Gasoline left over at the end of a voyage or a sailing season can siphoned out and burned in dinghy engines and cars. Also, nothing eats gasoline, and if stabilized using some additives it keeps for a few years (in my experience at least).

My plan for QUIDNON is to build it with an engine well in the back of the pilot house. The engine bracket will slide up and down on rails that will be mounted on generous neoprene doughnuts to insulate the boat from engine vibration, and the engine well itself will be very well insulated against the high-pitched whine of an outboard engine. This, it turns out, is much easier than insulating against the clatter and throb of a diesel. I haven't worked out the horsepower requirements yet, but the range is between 35hp and 75hp.

If the engine needs to be lifted out to be worked on, a pad-eye on the roof of the pilot house directly above the engine well will accept a hoist. Once laid down in the pilot house, it can be carried out on deck by 2-3 people (a Yamaha F90 short-shaft, which I think would be overkill, weighs 366 lbs) and swung over the side onto the dock or into another boat using a hoist hanging from the end of the foremast boom.

The Rig

That's a lot of sail!

Sails are big business, and you can spend as much money on a set of fancy carbon fiber sails alone as on an entire good-sized sailboat in reasonable condition. But you can get around all that by going with a Chinese Junk rig. It has numerous other advantages beyond relatively low cost.

For starters, it gives you the ability to raise, trim, lower and reduce sail all without having to ever set foot on deck. It doesn't require a winch, just lots of blocks and plenty of line.

Junk sails are quite easy to make because they can be cut perfectly flat and still work. However, there are some complaints about them. They don't pull to windward when there is hardly any wind. Also, they don't point quite as high as a sloop, and the tacking can be quite slow. But they are much better than any sloop off the wind.

But it's not too hard to camber the panels, as Arne Kvernland recommends doing. Cambering the panels as shown gives them “belly” or “bagginess” so that it is the panel's shape rather than the flex of the battens that forms it into an airfoil that can take advantage of the Bernoulli effect to generate lift and move the boat to windward. A cambered Junk sail can be just as good to windward as a sloop rig.

(Here is a super-quick explanation of the physics: an airfoil generates higher pressure along its inner surface, and correspondingly lower pressure along its outer surface, thereby generating suction which can be used to pull the boat to windward.) 

I've gone through Arne's plans, and I am thinking of doing something just a little bit different. First, cambering the triangular top panels (the “storm sail” portion) seems unnecessary; they are shaped like Lateen sails anyway, which do work as airfoils even without any camber. Up there the wind is always a bit stronger, and I can rely on the flex of the battens to produce an airfoil.

Second, it seems like camber should be tunable, to be adjusted as the sails stretch and depending on the sort of sailing one tends to do. Third, I see no reason to add camber forward of the mast, since that will only be useful on the starboard tack, when the sail is pulling away from the mast, and will actually hurt windward performance on the port tack by rendering the sail forward of the sail useless. But I think Arne definitely has the right idea overall.

To make a sail, panels of fabric are stitched together along the selvage, then the whole ting is trimmed to size, reinforced and grommeted. The fabric doesn't have to be low-stretch, because the span of cloth between battens is rather small and no amount of it is under any great amount of tension. If made of ultraviolet-resistant Sunbrella fabric (which is used for dodgers, awnings and sail covers) Junk sails take a very long time to wear out.

I would like to make the lower panels cambered, and to make the camber tunable. My plan is as follows. Add to the sail some small grommets— large enough to admit two thicknesses of parachute chord—above the boom and to each side of the lower battens, as shown. Then, to induce camber, the grommets are laced up like a boot. The lacing is adjusted to produce the optimum amount of camber. The grommets at the luff and the leech are larger and will be strain-relieved using strapping. They will be tied together with several turns of thicker line, to deal with the higher strain at those points. When there is no wind, they will carry half the tension between the halyard and the boom downhaul (or the reefing line when the sail is reefed). The other grommets are more like reefing points and won't generate much strain, being responsible for the pull generated by just a small portion of one panel.

As the sail wears and the panels become baggier, the lacing is loosened gradually, until, when the sail is good and threadbare (Junk sails continue work fine even with fairly large holes in them) the lacing can be taken out completely, and the bagginess will remain because the fabric has stretched. The idea is not entirely original: there is a grommet on dinghy sails called a cunningham. It is used to take the belly out of the sail in strong winds. Well, these grommets are, I suppose, “reverse cunninghams.”

Because they have to slide almost all the way up the mast, Junk sails preclude the use of spreaders. It is still possible to use a forestay and straight shrouds, but why not go unstayed instead? Tapered aluminum flagpoles make very good unstayed masts. Not having to include shrouds, stays and spreaders saves quite a lot of money and an amazing amount of deck clutter when the masts are down on the boom gallows and the boat is being used as a canal boat.

For battens, I am thinking of using square-section aluminum tubing on the starboard side of the sail which faces the mast, and aluminum bar of matching width on the port side. It will be assembled by drilling holes every few inches through the bar, the sail and one side of the tubing, and pop-riveting through them with aluminum pop-rivets. Where the batten rubs against the sail, it will be sheathed with a half-round of PVC pipe (made by sawing PVC pipe in half lengthwise). These battens will be quite stiff, and the sail will rely on the camber of the rectangular panels and the Lateen sail-like characteristics of the triangular top panels to produce lift.

The sail plan I have in mind is quite large for a 36-foot boat: 1000 sq. ft. This should make the boat nice and fast off the wind in light winds, which is just the sort of sailing I like to do.

The sail plan shown above is based on Hassler & MacLeod's adaptation of the Chinese Junk rig. They introduced some significant simplifications and improvements into the ancient design, which is quite an achievement. I hope that my reverse cunninghams will be another leap forward for this wise and ancient design.

The only other possibly new element I've introduced is the use of boom gallows for sheet blocks. It shortens the sheets by a large amount, and keeps the mass of line from invading the deck when tacking or jibing. On daysails, there may be people, children and small animals milling about the deck, and this arrangement will make it less likely that they will get entangled and pulled overboard.

The idea is that as the sail is raised, it rotates forward on the mast to the extent allowed by the parrels that hold the spars and battens onto the mast. When raised, the sail sits forward of the gallows, giving the sheets room to do their work. When the sail is dropped onto the gallows, it is sheeted in tight at the same time, pulling it back onto the gallows.

That's the theory. Will it work in practice? Well, we'll just have to see. The fallback is to have one extra line, going from the front end of the boom straight back, whose one job to pull the sail back before releasing the aft topping lift to plop the whole assembly onto the boom gallows.

What do you think, will it work?

Ballast and stability

Dave and I have been puzzling over this all day (among other things): How much ballast should QUIDNON carry? Its beam and hard chines will make it very stiff for very little ballast, but how much is enough, and under what conditions?

To answer that question, let's ask another one: Take your typical cruising sailboat if you take it out into a near gale, a fresh gale, a whole gale, or a strong gale, corresponding to 7, 8, 9 and 10 on the Beaufort scale (we won't do this exercise in a whole storm because that would be completely stupid in any boat). What happens if you then put up all the sails (in this case, 1000 ft of canvas), sheet them in as tight as you can, and... turn the boat sideways to the wind?

Answer: instant knock-down. Right?

Wrong! I did this with HOGFISH in a near gale, and what it did was wallow at a 45º angle, gently drifting to leeward. Her builder, Chris Morejohn, said he did this same exercise on purpose during her sea trials, with his friend who is a naval architect, in a gale, and found that doing so had a similar effect. He said that she is impossible to capsize, and I believe him.

I want QUIDNON to behave similarly well, so I did some math. Here is a little table I put together:

The thing being calculated is the amount of ballast needed to achieve this effect under various conditions. Now, 40,000 lb of ballast is borderline reasonable. Above that we get into the somewhat ridiculous territory; the boat would still float fine, but would be fully loaded with ballast in order to make it safe for a completely incompetent, borderline suicidal skipper. And that just isn't me.

Keeping in mind that 1000 sq. ft of canvas is quite a lot, and that this exercise is about as extreme as I can imagine (don't try this with your boat, please!) I am tempted to just dial in the ballast at around 20,000 lbs and leave it at that. After all, the Junk rig is so easy to reef when the wind picks up.

Nothing fancy

No, not like that...

This principle is really pretty simple, but the amount of money it saves is phenomenal. Most commercially built sailboats have the pretense of being little yachts. Yachts are supposed to have perfectly shiny smooth gel coat finishes or paint jobs that require waxing, like cars. They often have exposed, varnished wood on the outside of the hull called “brightwork,” and keeping it looking good is a constant battle, especially in the tropics. They have expensive stainless steel rigging and stanchions, and maybe even some fancy pieces of cast bronze. Inside, they have cabin soles (floorboards) of plywood made of teak and holly ($350 a sheet last I checked!) and lots of fancy hardwood cabinetry with fancy joinery.

The simple phrase “workboat finish” gets around all that madness, reducing the cost (and the fuss) by a very large amount. If the topsides are painted flat black, then you can use old car tires as fenders (free) instead of buying fancy inflatable vinyl fenders that make annoying squelching noises and tend to pop during storms. A deck surfaced with diamond plate works just as well as a teak one. In the cabin, simple plywood paneling and cabinetry painted in light pastel colors brighten the place up. Rigging should be galvanized steel, not stainless: it is more reliable and a lot less expensive.

Another powerful cost-saving technique is to avoid the word “marine” whenever possible. Any product labeled “marine” automatically results in at least a 100% mark-up. Often a supposedly “marine” product is simply a relabeled and marked-up version of a product designed for the RV market. This is especially true when it comes to plumbing, electricity and electronics, but applies to almost all kinds of hardware.

The list of such cost-saving techniques is almost endless, and practical people who live aboard boats accumulate long lists of them, and spend a good deal of time swapping tips on what works and what doesn't. Such little discoveries are a point of pride; after all, you never know what might work until you try it. Over the years, I've tried a lot of things that didn't work, and that's useful too, because it has kept me busy, and humble.

Hull shape

Click to enlarge

The main trick for keeping costs down is to keep the hull square, with a flat bottom, flat, slightly flared (10-13º) sides, and a flat, flush deck. Any additional complexity to the shape—compound curves, rounded chines, multiple chines—involve additional labor, molds, lofting, scrap and general complexity. A square hull complies with the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). The bottom should have rocker, the sides some flare. That's it!

In order to cut smoothly through the water, the lengthwise curve of the bottom (called “rocker”) must exactly match the curve of the sides, giving the water no excuse to want to flow across the chines which join them, causing turbulence and drag.

This rule can be relaxed somewhat toward the transom; making the transom wider provides a bit of weather helm, which provides built-in safety: if the steering gear fails, the boat noses up into the wind and stalls instead of falling off to leeward and maybe capsizing.

The chines should have lips that extend out horizontally, called “chine runners.” The chine runners provide enough lateral resistance to make it possible to sail without extending the centerboard(s) except when going to windward. In a tight spot, they even make it possible to sail to windward over shallows, where there is not enough draft to extend the centerboard. Chine runners work so well that one successful microcruiser design (Matt Leyden's PARADOX) doesn't even need a centerboard.

This sort of hull is easy to construct out of plywood sheets screwed and glued together and sheathed with fiberglass, and it sails just about as well as anything. My first boat, HOGFISH, which was a 32-foot square boat, could do 7.5 knots out on the ocean in moderate conditions, and that's good enough. Anything done to improve on that I would consider gold-plating, especially if it detracts from the boat's usefulness as a houseboat.

But I am improving on the traditional square boat hull shape somewhat. HOGFISH was a sharpie, with a sharp stem at the bow that joined the bottom just below the waterline, whereas QUIDNON is a scow and has a bulbous, rounded bow that bounces over the waves or, when that doesn't work, punches through them like a battering ram. Both designs are effective, and have even won races, but the scow can have much wider beam, providing lots of living space, which is essential for a houseboat.

Square boats have numerous advantages beyond low cost and ease of construction. Perhaps most importantly, they can go aground safely. Some boats go to windward well, and that's laudable, but hardly any of them go aground worth a damn. Keelboats flop on their side, bounce around in the surf and get destroyed. Washing up on the beach is a calamity for virtually every sailboat, and even “touching bottom” in calm conditions is considered an emergency of the highest order.

A square boat, with its flat bottom, can be beached, rolled ashore over round bits of driftwood, and relaunched later on without much fuss at all. Such a boat doesn't require a crane with slings, a Marine Travelift or a marine railway with a cradle to haul out or launch—just a ramp dug into a beach, some logs and a winch.

It can also settle upright at low tide, making it possible to anchor it in shallow water. Running aground in a square boat is generally a non-event: I ran aground numerous times in HOGFISH, and just waited for the tide to float me off. If that didn't work, then I “kedged off” by setting an anchor in deeper water by rowing it out with the dink, then winching it in.

Square boats make better houseboats because they have much more storage space. Using simple math, you can calculate a round-bilge boat has 20% less cross-section than a square hull of the same dimensions, but that's deceptive, because most objects you want to store are rectangular in cross-section and fit well a square hull but not a round one.

Square boats can also carry a lot more weight: because of the large surface area of the flat bottom, it takes a lot more weight to submerge a square hull below its design waterline than a round hull of the same dimensions. They also track better in the water: the long, hard chines where the bottom meets the sides prevent them from yawing around when buffeted by wind and waves, and they maintain the ability to steer a straight course all the way down to a fraction of a knot.

Lastly, they are much more comfortable in big waves: they don't corkscrew down waves like round-bilged boats do, and there is no keel to trip up on waves (once the centerboard is pulled up). Also, they are slow to heel in a gust because of the large quantity of water that has to traverse the chines, and in all but the most severe conditions square hulls adopt a certain level of heel and just stay there, while round hulls rock back and forth continuously. Even when lying ahull in big waves square hulls refuse to build up much angular momentum because a lot of the energy is dissipated by water swilling over the chines, and this limits the rocking.

And, so I can shave a very large amount of the cost off simply by declaring that the hull will consist of exactly 5 planar surfaces, 3 of them simple curves (bottom and sides) and two perfectly flat (deck and transom). It won't look like a yacht, but it will still look like a boat, and that's good enough for me.

The biggest complaint about square boat seems to be their lack of sexy, sleek lines. Now, being a family man, I am not overly concerned about such matters, but in case you are, I have never found women to be particularly concerned about the lack of sexy, sleek lines in a boat—especially the sexier, sleeker women. They are mostly concerned about whether the toilet flushes, whether there is plentiful hot water for the shower, whether there is enough room for all their shoes and hanging lockers to hang their evening gowns, and whether there is enough flat surface on deck for them to stretch out and model their bikinis. And so the problem with the lack of sexy, sleek lines should be easy to remedy through the usual means, without resorting to trying to sculpt them out of plywood. Seems commonsense to me.

What does it mean?

Quidnon is Latin for “Why not?” As in, “Why not build the boat I want instead of putting up with somebody else's design that doesn't suit my needs?”

And what I happen to need is a houseboat, to live on. But I need it to move around, and not just a little bit, but a lot: over vast distances of open ocean. It doesn't have to be fast, but it does have to be safe, comfortable and, perhaps most importantly, cheap to build and cheap to run.

There are some other things that it must be able to do.

It must go aground well, and dry out upright rather than leaning over. Have you ever tried to live in a house that's leaning? Exactly.

It also should make it relatively easy to drop the masts, to turn it into a canal boat, without using a crane. Cranes cost a lot of money to hire.

It should be easy to haul out, by rolling it over round sticks while using the anchor winch. No Travelift or crane required.

It should make it possible to sail long distances without so much as setting foot on deck. In fact, it should make it possible to sail it across the ocean without changing out of the bathrobe or taking off the fuzzy slippers, or putting down the mug of hot tea. That was Blondie Hassler's ideal, and I share it.

This blog is to share my thoughts on boat design and, I hope, hear yours. I've been discussing it via email with some friends, and it's been incredibly useful already.

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I spent considerable time crafting general writing resolutions (in no particular order) that I feel able to keep, but will also push me a bit. I invite you to shamelessly steal any or all that appeal to you.

Some of my underlying thoughts:

PRIMARY INTENTION: I want the concept of lighting a candle in the darkness to underlie everything I write. This is the first year I’ve stated a primary intention. It feels right write.

Write what I want when I am ready. The emphasis here is on when. 2015 promises to be a challenging year of transition, and more than ever, I shall follow whatever schedule works, for writing in general and for writing blog posts. You may see large gaps this year, but no problem. I don’t flatter myself that you can’t face a week without reading a post from me.

Take as long as it takes to write it right. I’ve seen too many people make themselves crazy and produce less than their best work because they set an unrealistic deadline to publish, whether for the public or private distribution. I have that t-shirt in my drawer. Honor your writing and don’t do this to yourself.

Write something every day. No, grocery lists do not count, but a carefully crafted email with more than a paragraph does. Speaking of which, email is a good chance to practice being articulate and organized in presenting your thoughts. While it’s true that urgency may rule at times, take care that you’ve made yourself clear and fix egregious errors, especially those introduced by autocorrect.

Play with words. I’ve written so much about this. Write yourself out of your rut. Constantly think of new and fun ways to express yourself. This resolution links to Write it colorful and considering every angle.

Gorge on rich reading. Let everything you read serve as a self-directed writing workshop. Read once for the story and review to explore structure behind the magic. Make notes to nail those insights, then review the book, for your benefit as well as the author’s.

Share lots of stories informally. Gather a group of people who appreciate your writing and send stories around. Encourage their comments, good, bad and indifferent. You’ll learn a lot and they’ll enjoy the reads. Don’t limit yourself to just writers. All readers count.

Write it real. This thought goes beyond sticking to the facts. I’m reminding myself to include sensory detail, character quirks, self-talk, and those other elements that breathe life into scenes, real or imagined.

Check everything five times. This advice goes beyond checking spelling and grammar. My inbox overflows with emails describing sign bloopers, i.e. “Persons are prevented from picking flowers from any but their own graves.”

 Consider every angle. This advice is especially helpful for lifestory writers. You may be amazed when you consider how others may have viewed a situation or why they may have done what they did. These insights can be life changers.

Sign your name! to cement ownership and intention.

I wish for you a year filled with gratifying results from your writing, whenever, however you do it, with whomever you share.

Write now: make your own list of writing resolutions if you haven’t yet done so. I strongly urge you to do this on paper – pixels are okay if you use a stylus as I did. I’m partial to the Papyrus android app for such projects, partly because my markers have dried up and I like to use lots of color. The idea is to involve brain centers and muscles that add personal value to the writing process.